When document production is performed entirely in a non-electronic format (e.g., paper), it may be possible to develop a draft of a paper and then shred the draft, effectively removing all traces of the draft. Paper document shredding may be important for legal, privacy, or compliance reasons. Shredding the draft would destroy not only the printed text but also any annotations that were made on the draft. These annotations may have included edits, comments, and/or other markup.
When developing, drafting, editing, or collaborating using electronic documents, such “shredding” becomes more difficult. Electronic documents may be stored on computer media, edited using electronic document editing tools, and communicated to other individuals or groups of individuals (e.g., via electronic mail or other mechanisms) for review. Each intermediate version of a document leaves an electronic copy that may be saved in computer media, potentially both on systems belonging to the participants and on systems providing the electronic communication, such as mail or file servers. Moreover, each of these systems periodically saves copies of their data on other media, such as magnetic tape, backup servers, or other systems. Under some circumstances, the intermediate electronic copies of the document may result in a security risk, or present other information-related risks. Accordingly, it may be beneficial for a secure communication ecosystem to provide the ability to electronically “shred” some or all portions of intermediate document versions that are generated during electronic document collaboration.